Unlucky ice fishermen invent hoser hot tub

Delhi, Ont., area resident Scott Chesterman and Mike Saunders of St. Williams built a hot tub and towed it out onto the Inner Bay of Long Point near Booth's Harbour earlier this month. (Holly Porter/Contributed photo)

Sarah Doktor, QMI Agency

SIMCOE, Ont. — It can get pretty cold for some people hoping to reel in a big catch while ice fishing, but a group of local anglers came up with a pretty creative solution.

Scott Chesterman and a few friends constructed a hot tub out of wood and used snowmobiles to tow it out to their ice huts on Lake Erie off Long Point earlier this month. There they filled it with water and heated it using an old wood stove.

“It takes a couple of hours to heat up,” Chesterman said.

People travelling by on snowmobiles stopped to see what the group was doing.

“Some almost snapped their necks looking back,” Chesterman said.

The group constructed the tub for the novelty of it.

“I’m pretty sure we’re the only people that have ever done it,” Chesterman said. “It was once in a lifetime, that’s for sure.”

It also made fishing more fun because they weren’t having much luck.

“We weren't catching any fish, so we thought we'd do something else,” Chesterman said